


proof of ruin

by intimatopia



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Communication, Consent Issues, Devotion, Dom/sub, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Lio Fotia Is A Mess (Promare), M/M, Misgendering Kink, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:07:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23445226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intimatopia/pseuds/intimatopia
Summary: Lio doesn't understandwant. Meis and Gueira learn to work with his limitations.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Gueira/Meis
Comments: 7
Kudos: 92





	proof of ruin

**Author's Note:**

> [additional warnings in end notes]
> 
> thanks to worms for encouraging me to write this fic and encouraging my obsession with mb3 and loving cnc, mac for general enthusiasm (and reading this and telling me its good) and jade for the beta.
> 
> maybe NOW i will be able to stop thinking about this fucking concept

“You nearly got caught,” Meis said severely. He’d folded his arms across his chest and his mouth was pressed into a flat thin line.

Lio threw himself onto the couch, putting his legs up on the coffee table and fiddling with one of the belts that encircled his thigh. His body ached, not just tired but _tired._ All the years of being tired, of burning, of wounds that healed in no time at all and left only exhaustion behind. It was hard to breathe, with the binder and with the leftover adrenaline spiking in his blood. “ _Nearly_ ,” he pointed out crossly. “I didn’t get caught.”

“You were sloppy,” Meis said harshly. He was only harsh when it was just them. But he was honest. “You shouldn’t have come _close_ to being caught, Lio, I know you. I know what you’re capable of.”

“And I have not yet proven myself _incapable_ ,” Lio shouted. “So stop treating me like—” _like a battery running out of power. Like something that would have to be replaced. Like every mistake was proof he was ruined._

He didn’t say that out loud.

“No one,” Meis said, measured and firm, “Said anything about ‘incapable.’”

“Then I don’t know what you’re saying,” Lio snapped, implicitly laying the blame for that at Meis’s feet.

“He’s saying,” Gueira growled, standing in the doorway of the bedroom he used. “He’s saying you need to catch a _break,_ Boss, before something catches _you_.”

“If I get caught, I will get out,” Lio said, neatly sidestepping Gueira’s point.

They both waited, well-versed in his brand of bullshit.

He finally undid the belt, sliding it out from under his thigh. It was a deceptively simple strip of black leather. The metal of the buckle was shiny. The leather was worn by use, but retained a sense of its own worth. Lio was good at not thinking about some things. It was an exercise in self control. Hold the belt, don’t think about how it would feel around your neck. Or think about it without _thinking_ about it, think about it without _wanting._

Gueira broke the silence first. “We’re running the next two scouts on our own,” he said, in a tone that well knew it could be overridden and was also very sure that it wouldn’t be.

Lio would press the point, later. For now he swung his legs up onto the sofa and laid his head on the arm and covered his eyes with his hand. Tired was the only injury Burnish flames couldn’t heal, because it wasn’t an injury. Lio didn’t think about what it was.

They ran the next mission without him, but he came along on the one after that. Was vindicated when his flames and fast thinking saved them from having to jump off a cliff. Literally.

Meis and Gueira were rather less pleased. They didn’t say anything, of course, because they were well aware that their silence hurt him worse than anything they could say. The silence that meant they’d given up on getting through to him, that they didn’t consider him worth the attempt.

He made dinner that night just for something to do with his hands that wasn’t fiddling with a belt. Ended up too frustrated with himself to actually eat, retreating to his own room before they came out of theirs and fighting the twin urges to do arson and crawl into his closet and hide there until all the fraying edges of him had knit back together.

He compromised by sitting in the bathtub, half-filled with hot water. Lit flames between his fingers just for the satisfying fizzle when he stuck his hand under water.

And then he nodded off.

When he opened his eyes again, Gueira was sitting on his heels next to him. “Hi,” he said quietly.

“‘Lo,” Lio croaked. It would be wrong to drink bathtub water to clear his throat with someone watching, so he didn’t do it. “Thought I locked the door.” He glanced at it as he spoke; it was ajar and the doorknob gave the distinct impression of having recently come into contact with fire.

Gueira shrugged innocently. “You’ve been sitting in there for a while,” he said.

“Sure have,” Lio agreed. He glared down at himself. He was no longer wearing the binder and while he didn’t particularly like them seeing him shirtless, he wasn’t exactly opposed to it either. The lack of underwear below clouded water was another story. He didn’t need to be reminded that they’d had sex _now,_ when his resolve was so weak.

“I’ll get you a towel,” Gueira said, rising smoothly.

When he came back he also had panties and a t-shirt that wasn’t Lio’s—something that belonged to one of them that had been shuffled into his closet on laundry day and never returned—along with the promised towel. Lio dressed as quickly as he could, came out clutching the towel and still dripping water down his legs.

Gueira was sitting on his bed, flipping through one of the novels on the bedside table. Lio hadn’t had time to read them in weeks or months. “You okay?” Gueira asked, not looking up.

Lio sat down at his desk. “I’m okay,” he answered.

“According to us or according to you?” Gueira continued.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that,” Lio said blandly.

They’d had sex more than once in the years they’d worked together. Lio remembered the first time, and if he forced his mind to work down a list he could remember every time after that. The first time, when Meis had held him against a wall and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him until Lio’s mind felt like broken glass reflecting firelight, every shard a different hot shade. How he’d kept kissing Lio while Gueira fingered him, promising him endless loyalty. _His_ boys. They’d do anything for him.

He’d have done anything for _them._ He kept waiting for them to ask.

His silence was answer enough.

Meis brought intensity into everything he did. But when Lio moved to the bed to kiss Gueira, it hardly felt like a change at all. He didn’t have to think himself into this—it was harder to _not_ do it, sometimes. Kissing Gueira felt right—like holding fire, the way his hands cradled Lio’s face and the careful way his body pushed Lio’s into the bed. All natural heat and sweetness, his fingers in Lio’s hair. He could’ve done this forever.

He was confused and aching and wet by the time Gueira really pulled back. If he looked down he thought he’d find the stiff peaks of his nipples tenting the t-shirt. He didn’t look down, kept looking at Gueira’s bright kind eyes.

“Do you want this?” Gueira asked softly.

“I,” Lio started. There was too much confusion and guilt inside him for a plain _yes._ And too much raw desire for a plain _no._ “I don’t know,” he confessed.

“You don’t have to,” Gueira said, prying his hands off of Lio and climbing down. He squeezed Lio’s ankle briefly. “Sleep well, Boss.” He left gracefully and without either judgment or rancour in his posture.

Lio watched him go, aching with frustrated arousal and loss.

Like Lio, Meis’s favorite pastime was burning things. His flame was the weakest of all of theirs, though he more than made up for it in sheer precision. He could dip a rag in vodka and burn out only the alcohol. He could write letters in fire with the tips of his fingernails.

Their dining table was covered in the words. Most of them swear words, some of them idle scraps of poetry. The logo for the Mad Burnish featured strongly. They hadn’t had a logo until Meis took it upon himself to find a symbol they all liked so he could burn it everywhere they went. Lio loved him.

Meis’s fire wasn’t weak by any means—among other Burnish he ranked among the strongest—and still his obsession with precision, just like his obsession with knowing people. With knowing _them._

It was almost three am. Lio made himself two slices of toast and a mug of hot chocolate that was ninety percent marshmallow with chocolate poured in the cracks.

He handed two slices of toast on a plate to Meis, who accepted them with one hand and kept typing on his laptop with the other. Lio sat down crosslegged on the counter, facing him. “What’re you working on?” he asked, crunching.

“Thesis,” Meis said. He had been a geology major, in another life. Now he mapped the minutiae of the connection the Burnish shared with the magma under the crust of the earth. Lio didn’t pretend to understand it.

“Can I talk?” Lio asked. Sometimes Meis didn’t like it when they talked while he was working.

Meis nodded tersely. His toast was going cold. Lio watched the bubbled butter pop and tried to figure out what he wanted to say. “Gueira kissed me,” he tried. “Well. We kissed. It was mutual.” Meis hummed. “And then he asked if I wanted it and,” he faltered. “I didn’t know.”

“Are you hoping _I’ll_ know?” Meis asked, finally taking his hands off the keyboard to eat toast. He still didn’t look at Lio, but he was sufficiently distracted now.

“ _Do_ you?” Lio asked in return.

“I know you’re a mess, Boss,” Meis told the screen. He said _boss_ the way he’d used to say _Fotia,_ back before he’d been their Boss. Derisive but affectionate.

“That doesn’t help me,” Lio said plaintively.

Sometimes he thought Meis and Gueira both forgot he was a full decade younger than them. There was a vast difference between nineteen and twenty-nine. Even if he was their Boss.

He’d been sixteen when the flare hit. Just beginning to figure out what he preferred to dress like. Meis had been finishing his first degree and getting started on the second. Gueira had lived alone for eight years.

Meis turned to him, toast crumbs on his tank top. “Let me put it like this,” he said clearly. “Are you asking me if _I_ know whether _you_ want to have sex with _Gueira_?”

“When you put it like that, it sounds a little dumb,” Lio said sadly.

“Do you want that?” Meis asked abruptly, pointing at the mug. Lio handed it over. “I asked if you _wanted_ it, idiot.”

“What?” Lio said blankly.

Meis turned back to his laptop, clearly done. Lio didn’t know what he’d done wrong. “Go to bed,” he sighed finally, scooping marshmallow out onto the second slice of toast and folding it in half to stuff into his mouth.

This made conversation completely impossible. Lio went to bed.

He kept turning over want in his head though, unable to sleep. How was he supposed to _know_ what he wanted? He wanted to burn. He wanted them to be alright, to make a world where there was happiness and safety for people like him. Want as a concept faltered closer to home.

Did he want to sleep? He didn’t _not_ want to sleep.

He wanted—

He wanted to be less tired.

The conversation and its questions dogged him from morning to night, staring at everything around him and thinking _do I want this? What about this?_ The question never started making sense. You couldn’t light a fire by _wanting_ to.

Well. Lio could. But that wasn't so much want as _intention,_ clear and precise and dangerous. You could _do things_ with intention.

He went back to Meis, his impatient sounding board. Meis always gave the impression of knowing more about people than they themselves knew, and although most people found it distinctly unnerving Lio enjoyed it very much. _Someone_ had to know. There was a comfort to learning like he was in a classroom again, like there were right answers and Meis had them.

“I think,” he announced to Meis. “That I don’t know how to want things.” He chewed at the inside of his lip after he said it. It wasn’t _completely_ accurate.

By the curve of his mouth in the light of his laptop, Meis agreed. The light went darker as Meis closed a window, and he turned to actually properly look at Lio. “What do you want to do about that?” he asked, and then smiled wryly at the same time that Lio rolled his eyes. “What should we do about that?” he rephrased.

Long before he’d come into his Burnish flare, Lio had burnt his hand in a campfire. In hindsight, a six year old shouldn’t have been left alone while the adults drank by the lake, but his parents had always been careless like that.

He’d never forgotten the thoughts that led up to it. He’d been sitting there with his coloring book. The fire had been bright and hot and it had hurt to look at. And _then_ Lio had been seized with the burning (ha) certainty that that fire wouldn’t harm him.

So he’d put his hand in it.

He’d been wrong.

Being around Meis recreated that experience over the course of months, over and over. Lio never thought Meis would hurt him, or could. He was intense and unyielding and Lio would have put his hands in that fire even if he could’ve been burnt by it. Nothing else would occur to him.

The reason Lio was thinking about this was because he was mostly naked right now. Sports bra and panties aside, though Meis had not looked at him with anything like desire.

Because he’d thought it was a good idea to walk into Meis’s room mostly naked and sit on his bed and bother him about things like _want._

“I think you’d know that better than me,” Lio said carefully. He didn’t know _what_ he was asking for but Meis would—that certainty was its own reward.

“Letting someone else decide what you want is dangerous.” Meis’s knuckles were white.

Lio heard fire in his ears. “But it’s _you_ ,” he said, plaintive.

Meis sighed. “What if I told you that you wanted to stay home for every mission?”

“I wouldn’t believe you,” Lio said immediately. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

“Okay,” Meis exhaled again. “What if I told you that you wanted to have sex with me, right now?”

Lio looked at his crossed ankles. The bareness of them. His cheeks felt hot. “Yes.”

“ _No_ ,” Meis snapped. “That would be rape.”

“Rape is such an ugly word,” Lio snapped back. He resented this direction very much, resented the entire idea that Meis could hurt him in a way that was truly _wrong._ Lio would have burnt for his boys a hundred times over, even if it was fatal. But it _wasn’t._

“Oh, I’m _sorry_ ,” Meis snarled sarcastically. “Would you prefer _violation,_ princess?”

Lio kissed him. He had to shut the laptop with his knee and then shove it aside on the bed to climb into Meis’s lap, but that felt almost automatic. He couldn’t _stop_ kissing Meis once he’d started. He kissed back angrily, hands on Lio’s thighs and fingers gripping hard enough to bruise. _Good._ Lio licked into his mouth and felt like his chest was full of thunder. He slid his hands under Meis’s t-shirt, finding smooth soft skin and the lovely hard planes of his muscles. Not as prominent as Gueira’s but still wonderfully satisfying to the touch.

Meis didn’t touch him back. He even took his hands off of Lio’s thighs when it became clear that Lio was steady enough without them, tightening his fists into the bedsheets with rather impressive control. Lio hated it. He hated it so _much._

But neither did Meis stop Lio from grinding down on his hard cock over his sweatpants. Lio would have preferred fucking—concrete and quantifiable—to _this,_ the awful sweet shame of fucking his dripping wet cunt against Meis’s dick through two, three layers of cloth. Meis didn’t need his hands to ruin Lio, or even his mouth. And Lio still couldn’t think about anything except that Meis didn’t want _him_ back enough to touch him.

He knew it wasn’t fair. He knew Meis was only doing it not to hurt him. But Lio couldn’t imagine what being wronged by Meis would entail. Certainly not this.

After they’d come he lay on top of Meis with his ear pressed against Meis’s chest. He thought there were tears dripping down his face, soaking into the sweat-damp t-shirt, but maybe that was just his imagination. He knew he was embarrassingly wet between the legs still. He _felt_ empty.

Meis curled an arm around him again, holding him in place. “I’m sorry I called you princess,” he said roughly.

Lio turned his head, giving his other ear an opportunity. “Say that again.”

“I’m sorry I—”

“Not that bit,” Lio said miserably.

Meis’s heart stuttered and sped up. “Princess?” he said tentatively. 

Lio shuddered. He couldn’t nod like this but he reached for Meis’s other hand and squeezed his fingers.

“Oh, _Lio_ ,” Meis said, voice thick with tenderness.

“Can I sleep here?” Lio asked.

Gueira listened to Meis’s version of events while Lio sipped at hot coffee and tried not to shrivel up out of embarrassment. He didn’t know which part was the worst. Either the one where Meis refused to touch him or the one where Lio asked to be called princess. Neither. Both.

And then Gueira told them they were going to talk, and so they were. Lio didn’t like talking and Meis disliked needing to talk. That things worked as well as they did was a miracle composed of Gueira and the whiteboard next to the kitchen sink. Lio’s bedroom was the largest and the only one with a proper queen-sized bed. By unspoken agreement, important conversations didn’t happen at the dinner table.

He also ended up sitting half in Gueira’s lap. To Lio’s knowledge, there was no formal agreement that Gueira and Meis took turns with him. In practice, though, it always seemed to work out like that. It wasn’t jealousy so much as generosity.

At least he was fully dressed this time. Some comfort. Gueira was the most comfortable person to sit against. Lio could never quite remember his parents’ faces when he was in Gueira’s arms.

It was possible Lio was quite tired. He said nothing, though.

Meis said, “I don’t want to do anything he doesn’t want.” He sounded wretched, like he’d _already_ crossed every line.

Lio snorted, then yawned. “You haven’t,” he promised.

“How do you know?” Gueira rumbled.

It was a reasonable question, Lio decided. He considered his answer carefully, through layers of sleepiness. “Because I liked it,” he settled finally.

They were both quiet for a long minute. He dozed against Gueira’s bicep.

Sleeping was easier when they were both with him. He didn’t have as many bad dreams. He always had a hand to hold or a torso to burrow into. He’d never been so lonely he tried to drink bleach. It was more than enough.

They dragged his duvet over all of them. He held onto them with one hand each. _His boys._

“Meis is afraid he’ll hurt you,” Gueira translated over breakfast. They were in the living room.

Looking at Meis, Lio wondered if he _really_ thought he already had hurt Lio. He certainly gave off a distinctly penitent vibe. “You’re _not_ going to hurt me, though,” Lio tried. He didn’t know how to explain his certainty. “I _know_ you’re not.”

“What if we force you into something you don’t want?” Meis asked.

Lio shrugged philosophically.

“We could cause _serious damage_ ,” Meis snapped. “You’re taking this too lightly.”

“I refuse,” Lio said coldly. “to countenance the suggestion that one of you might rape me. Firstly because I am _not_ that incapable of telling when I don’t want something, and secondly because,” he leaned forward. “ _You_ aren’t going to hurt _me_.”

Meis blinked at him. He looked lost.

“I think,” Gueira said evenly. “That you might have a very narrow idea of what constitutes rape. And that if you can’t tell at once _whether_ you want something you also can’t tell if you _don’t_ want it, then the gap between your knowledge and what’s happening is a gap where you _could_ get hurt.”

“How _bad_ could it be, though,” Lio said reasonably.

Meis put his head in his hands. “For starters,” he croaked, “I would _never_ be able to look either of you in the eye again.”

It made rather more sense when he put it like that.

“I burnt my hand when I was six,” Lio told no one. “We were on a camping trip. We stayed for another week.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Meis said passionately. He was wonderfully easy to distract. Then: “How bad was it?”

“Third degree.” Lio stared straight at the wall behind Meis. He didn’t want to think about what he was admitting to.

“On your _hand_?” Gueira frowned. “You should’ve been taken to the hospital.”

“But I wasn’t,” Lio said tersely.

They both got it within seconds of each other. Lio was still deliberately not thinking. Neither of them looked pitying, but understanding was as bad. His childhood had been what it was. And now it was over. He didn’t think about it.

The flare had healed every scar on his body, washing away all evidence.

“I think,” Lio said, a long time later. “I would want whatever you gave me.”

“You trust us _that_ much?” Gueira said, hooking his ankle with Lio’s under the table. It was an affectionate gesture. Lio’s cheeks flamed.

But—of _course_ he trusted them. They wouldn’t hurt him. They couldn’t.

“You care about me,” Lio told the edge of the table.

“That _shouldn’t_ be enough,” Meis said flatly.

Lio rolled his eyes. He couldn’t help it. If care wasn’t enough, what _would_ be? He’d trust them with the future of the Burnish—compared to that, his body hardly mattered. But that part he didn’t say. He didn’t want them to look at him like _that_ again. “Just—do your thing,” he said. “And I’ll tell you if I don’t like it.”

“That,” Meis mumbled, “Is a _very_ dangerous thing to say.”

This time they didn’t kiss him, but Gueira shoved him into his bed and climbed on top of him while Meis shuffled through Lio’s closet. Gueira slid a hand under Lio’s shirt, hot hand against Lio’s ribs. Lio whined and arched into the touch. “Can I?” Gueira asked. “Will you tell me if you don’t want something?”

Lio propped himself up on his elbows. “I _can’t_ ,” he said, frustrated. “I want— _whatever_ you want to do to me. Stop asking, okay? I don’t know and I—just _keep going_.”

“Dangerous,” Meis chided, walking up on the bed on his knees. Lio dropped his head back to look at him. Meis was holding a strip of black leather in his hand. Lio’s mouth went dry. Meis gave him a soft smile, pushing him into Gueira’s waiting grip. “Take off his shirt,” Meis ordered lazily.

Lio felt hot and cold. There was a confident possession in Meis’s voice. He said it like Lio belonged to him, like he was the _only_ person with the right to make that decision. It hit Lio somewhere deep below _wanting_ and _need,_ bypassing all of that with no effort. Lio didn’t even have to _think_ about wanting this, like he didn’t have to think about wanting to breathe. It was impossible to conceive of anything else, and so nothing else needed to be considered.

He went limp and stayed that way as Gueira stripped his shirt off. Reached out blindly for a hand to hold while Meis buckled the collar around his neck.

 _Want,_ Lio decided, tasted like the pressure of a belt in his throat. He squeezed Gueira’s fingers.

It was so much _easier_ when he didn’t have to think about what was happening. His world was reduced to Meis rubbing over his aching cunt through his underwear and the sharp pain of Gueira’s teeth worrying at his already sensitive nipples. He felt teary and overfull with sensation, and didn’t know how he was meant to bear even more of this.

Having them so near took the edge off, though. Or maybe it was being released from the responsibility of knowing what he was meant to want or do.

“You’re so lovely,” Gueira murmured, mouthing at Lio’s collarbone.

“Call him princess,” Meis ordered, still teasing at Lio’s cunt through his underwear. Lio whined. “He likes that. Likes being our princess. Don’t you, Lio?”

“Yes,” Lio whimpered. He didn’t know how to explain it, either, but if he had the words he’d have told them that it felt like being special and irreplaceable, and he was always greedy for both of those things. _Their_ princess, something wanted.

Was that what being an object was like? To be desired without experiencing desire yourself? Lio loved it. Loved that he didn’t have to want or ask to be given what he needed.

He cried out when Meis finally pushed the tips of his fingers into Lio’s dripping hole.

“We’ve got you,” Gueira promised. His hands were heavy on Lio’s sides, his mouth worrying at the edge of the belt. “We’ve got you, princess.”

Lio swallowed. Meis pushed another finger inside him, the intrusion a vivid burst of pleasure inside his body. _More,_ he thought, and didn’t know what that meant when everything was already too _much._ His mind was slipping into a calm state he rarely achieved on his own. He tilted his head away, giving Gueira space to bite at his neck. _More._

He’d never otherwise have allowed himself as much pleasure as he felt right now. Meis knew it too: “Look at you,” he murmured, as he jerked himself off with the hand that had been inside Lio just minutes prior. He ached with emptiness and didn’t know what to do with it. “Feels good to be taken care of, doesn’t it?”

 _You’re so good to me,_ Lio thought. It felt like he was drifting in an incoherent deep peace where pleasure knocked him every which way and he didn’t attempt to fight it.

“Both of you,” he mumbled. It was hard to form words. “You’re _both_ —my boys. _Mine_.”

“We’re going to fuck you till you can’t speak,” Gueira said, hungry and awed. “It’s the least we can do for you, Lio.” There was so much love and loyalty in his voice that Lio turned towards it, greedy. He never doubted them.

But pleasure was a different beast, and the promise of it was terrifying. Lio was going to cry with his inability to make them understand. “But what about _you_?” he asked. Hoped one of them would get it.

“That’s not something you have to worry about,” Meis answered firmly. “I’m going to fuck you first, and then Gueira is. Put your fingers in his mouth—” that last was obviously directed at Gueira. “I don’t want him worrying himself.”

“ _Wasn’t_ ,” Lio protested, but then Gueira was slipping his fingers into Lio’s mouth and sucking on them was more important than anything except the head of Meis’s cock pushing into him, after so long that Lio once again wondered if he really _could_ take it and then decided he didn’t care as long as he was making his boys feel good.

“Look at yourself,” Gueira told him roughly. Lio did; staring at the place where Meis’s cock vanished into him. The sight entranced him, flames in his head drowning out every other sound.

Lio never _forgot_ how good it felt to be fucked. But he wasn’t the kind of person who asked for things he wasn’t already assured of receiving, and so this particular privilege—Meis’s cock pressed so deep inside him that it seemed to be carving out new space for him, changing Lio forever—was rare. As was the sight of Meis at the edge of losing control, eyes wild and harsh and fixed on Lio and Gueira like they were the only anchors he had, fingers biting bruises into Lio’s hips. Lio pushed up into the thrusts, begging Meis to take what he wanted.

He did. Lio reached for him as he groaned, bringing him closer to push his hands lovingly through Meis’s long hair, a silent promise. Meis came inside Lio with a low, wrecked sound, and Lio clenched around him just to feel the ache build on itself, even as he covered Lio’s stomach with a hot palm, stroking at Lio’s clit with his thumb.

It felt _good,_ pleasure like being thrown into fire. But Lio squirmed and shook his head, and Meis stopped. He didn’t know how to explain that impulse to them, but they didn’t ask.

And they barely gave him time to recover. Gueira had been patient and gentle enough to let Lio experience every sensation to its fullest. Meis was _rude,_ pinching at Lio’s nipples, rolling the nubs between his fingers. Lio was viciously empty in the aftermath of being fucked, but it didn’t occur to him that they’d _do_ something about it until Gueira was fucking him and then he gasped, raw and desperate.

He didn’t have to think at all, with them fucking him. They knew what _they_ wanted and that meant they knew what _he_ wanted. As long as those were the same thing, Lio was safe in their arms, and it _was_ the same thing. They were _his,_ down to every bit of pleasure they wrung out of his body for themselves.

“Breathe, princess,” Meis ordered. Lio gulped in air, whimpering as Meis squeezed at his breasts. But it just felt _good._ Good like Gueira’s cock splitting him open again, good like being overwhelmed as many times as it took for them to be happy—and he still didn’t know how to ask for what he wanted but that didn’t _matter_ as long as they were around to take it from him anyway, as long as he was with them.

Still.

Gueira had been waiting for longer—he came within a few thrusts, and didn’t try to touch Lio back. Lio was grateful, at least, for that. It wasn’t his pleasure that mattered, especially if he hadn’t _earned_ it.

He made a low, awful little sound when Gueira pulled out of him, though. He couldn’t stand being empty, couldn’t stand the way it felt like being abandoned.

Meis pet his sides soothingly. “We’re here, Boss,” he promised.

Lio closed his eyes and leaned back against Meis, let himself rest for a few minutes. He didn’t know what came next but he had no reason to believe it’d be easy. Anything for them, he reminded himself.

“You felt so good,” Gueira said softly, hungrily, and Lio’s eyes flew open. Meis shifted him, pulling him casually in further so he was bent almost in half—so that he was in the right position for Gueira to eat him out. “Fuck, Boss.” He punctuated that with a kiss to Lio’s knee, and Lio flinched and turned to Meis in confusion.

“He’s right,” Meis told him. “You’re alway so good to us and—” his voice cracked a little; he hid his next words in Lio’s hair. “You take such good care of us.”

“Oh,” Lio mumbled, aching with a fullness he couldn't name. He relaxed when he felt the first swipe of Gueira’s tongue against the sore folds of his cunt. Gueira was so fucking _good_ at this, and every time he did it left Lio weak in the knees. He trembled in Meis’s grip as Gueira ate him out, whimpers climbing into wanting cries as pleasure built in on itself. But he still couldn’t let himself tip over that edge. 

Not until Meis’s hand closed around his throat, stroking lightly at the skin near the belt until Lio threw his head back and gave in.

“Good boy,” Meis murmured. “You did so well, Lio.”

“ _Did_ I,” Lio gasped, and suddenly he was closer to tears than he had been in _years._ Meis’s arms tightened around him and then Gueira was there too, fire and sweat and strength. He held onto one or both of them, struggling not to cry.

Gueira stroked his stomach, though, and Lio’s resolve faltered. “You’re ours, Boss,” he promised. “We take care of you as much as you take care of us.”

Lio’s resolve shattered, tears streaming down his face. He wiped at them hastily, hating the weakness of it, but Gueira grabbed his hand and held on tight. Meis kissed his hair, careful and sweet. And Lio didn’t think he cried for _that_ long, but he was exhausted by the time he was done. They were looking at him with an awful look he recognized as love and failed to parse in relation to himself.

“I think,” Meis said, soft voice edged with something darker, “That you _really_ just want to be told you’re good.”

Lio closed his eyes again. “Shut up.”

“You _are_ ,” Gueira said earnestly. “You’re the _best,_ and you’re _ours._ We love you.”

Lio put his hand over Gueira's mouth. Meis yanked it back. “That’s cheating,” he said sternly, and that brief harshness papered over the cracks that vulnerability had made in Lio’s ability to pretend he was alright. “You’re going to believe us one day, you know,” Meis threatened. Gueira was giving him a patient look, half-amused and half something else. 

Lio looked away. “Keep quiet,” he mumbled. “You talk too much. Time to sleep.”

“One day,” Gueira repeated. But he didn’t keep fighting it, shoving Meis into a side so that he could take the other, Lio between them as a matter of course.

 _Gotta make lunch,_ Lio thought, but then he let sleep overtake him. Their promise echoed inside him. _One day._

**Author's Note:**

> note: lio enjoys everything that happens but he has a fundamental inability to conceive of want or desire with himself as the subject. this fic is an exploration of that headspace in the context of a loving relationship. nevertheless, lio doesn't see himself as consenting to some of the things that happen to him, and this informs how he navigates sex and desire.
> 
> additional warnings: there is discussion of rape as a real possibility which is...not taken as seriously as it should be by one party. there are scattered implications of child neglect and the ensuing mental health issues (including a one-off mention of suicide)
> 
> i am on twitter as @pareidole. please comment! it helps me keep writing


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